"The whole point of traveling is to arrive alone, like a specter, in a strange country at nightfall, not in the brightly lit capital but by the back door, in the wooded countryside, hundreds of miles from the metropolis, where, typically, people don't see many strangers and were hospitable and do not instantly think of...

"We've forgotten the benefit of surface travel: It forces you to understand, deep in your bones, the distance you've covered; and it gradually eases you into a new context that exists not only outside your body, but inside your head." --Seth Stevenson, Grounded (2010)